Hello my friends! It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? At least a month since I’ve posted something here, and since so many of my recent posts have been about my summer journey on the Chemin du Puy, it feels like ages since we’ve actually caught up.

So here I am, with a little post to say hi. What have all of you been up to since I last checked in? I hope there’s been a lot of walking and maybe some traveling and adventures. Some of you have been out on a Camino, some of you are doing your best to discover new local walks. And some of you are continuing to just get outside everyday, walking the same old roads. I like all of these options.

My corner of the east coast had its first snow of the season on Saturday, and I have to say, I wasn’t quite prepared. Mild weather has stretched long into the fall this year, and so even though we’re well into December, I’m not quite ready for winter. But on Saturday, it was unmistakable: winter is here.

I always slow down at this time of the year, and I’m sure that this year will be no different. Already I think I’ve gotten back into a good writing routine, and I’ve returned to my big project, ‘The Book’. This is my memoir about my Camino Frances, interspersed with some other life tidbits (though this ‘interspersing’ is proving to be a difficult task). I’d written the bulk of a very rough draft nearly two years ago, and in the meantime have worked in fits and starts, getting little accomplished before becoming completely overwhelmed and confused about what I was trying to write.

Writing this book has felt, at times, so overwhelming and I’ve felt so far from having anything good, that it’s been easy to just walk away. I always intend to come back, but beginning the process again is difficult and I never get very far. But about a month ago I had this feeling that was hard to ignore- a bit of a tug, a persistent nudge, something echoing and bouncing around my mind: the book. The book. The book.

So I’ve come back to it and it’s been slow going but man, it feels good to be in it again. So that’s probably where you’ll find me this winter- sitting at my kitchen table, maybe with a glass of red wine and some mellow music playing on Spotify, muscling through the language and structure of my story. It’s where I always try to be in this season, sometimes more successfully than not. This year, I hope for great consistency and steady forward progress. Wish me luck!

And, beyond the writing, I’ve been continuing to walk. There have been a few new places: hikes in the Catskill Mountains of New York, a towpath along the Susquehanna River in Maryland, a new walking path a few miles away from where I live. But otherwise I’m in my familiar park, looping through my neighborhood, sometimes pacing back and forth in my apartment when my legs are feeling itchy (ahh, these cold and short winter days!).

On the horizon, well, there’s just more of the same. In an effort to save money for a desperately-needed new(ish) car, it’s doubtful that I’ll be taking off for any long-distance walking adventures in the springtime (but my memories of the Hadrian’s Wall trip last spring are such happy ones, and I’ve already done a good deal of research on hikes in Ireland for the springtime. For now this is just wishful thinking, and Ireland in the spring will probably have to wait at least another year).

But even as I’m staying put for the immediate future, there’s always the summer to dream about. Ahh, these have been such fun dreams. It’s all but certain that I’ll be returning for a 4th (!!) trip to La Muse, my writer’s retreat in a small French mountain village. If I hadn’t made such good connections in these past two years I don’t know if I would have returned again so soon, but more and more I realize that I’ve been craving community. And I’ve had this incredible fortune of finding an artistic community of people I adore, and we have this really special and beautiful place we can return to and reunite in. Several of my friends are returning this summer, and I can’t resist the pull to return with them. And even though I seem to do more hiking and sitting-on-the-terrace-talking-and-wine-drinking than I do writing on these retreats, I think it is good that I’m giving myself the space and time to work on my projects. If I can continue to move forward with my book in these next months, then I just might be able to have a workable draft ready to send out by the end of the summer. Maybe.

A friend from the retreat has suggested a quick trip to the Italian Dolomites after our stay at La Muse, full of hiking and good food, and this is very, very appealing. (Do any of you know anything about the Dolomites? This would be a new area for me and I’m curious to hear of your experiences!).

And then, of course, I want to do some long-distance walking. Maybe some part of a Camino, maybe a trek through England (there are several I have my eye on). There’s still a lot to be figured out, but this is the fun part, when everything is a possibility, and I can research and look through photos and try to figure out what I most want to do. I’m lucky, very lucky, to be in this position.

Other updates:

-I’m still loving my Nadine Walks Instagram account. I try to post a photo every day, all of my favorites from my past-treks and Camino’s. Right now I’m still posting about my walk on the Camino del Norte, from 2015 & 2016. If you have Instagram and haven’t followed this account, please come over!

-The e-book I published two months ago, ‘After the Camino’, is still around. It was such a fun experience to put together a book and share it with people, and I hope that more travelers and pilgrims will continue to find it.

-Have you heard about #walk1000miles? It’s a free challenge that was created by Country Walking, a top-selling magazine in the UK. I think it’s been around for at least a few years, and it encourages walkers to sign up and join a larger community of people who are all trying to walk 1,000 miles in a year. It’s easy to join and is all honesty-based, so all you have to do is track your miles. There’s a very interactive and supportive Facebook group and check-ins throughout the year, which all helps with motivation and encouragement. Even though I’m not in the UK, I signed up and thought it would be a lot of fun to track my miles for 2018. I know a lot of you reading this could be interested in the challenge, so here’s the link… we can do this together!

-Finally, I decided to try to use some affiliate links on this blog. I’m not sure that it’s really something that will be worthwhile for me and for what I do here, but occasionally I talk about the gear that I use on my walks and I love to recommend stuff that has worked for me (like, for instance, my Keen shoes. I will probably never stop talking about how much I love them). So if I use an affiliate link (like I did above with the Keens), and if you click through and end up purchasing that product (or, since this is the Amazon affiliate program, any product you purchase after following my link), a very small percentage of the cost will come to me (and at absolutely no cost to you!). If I make $10.00 I think I will be lucky, and I promise you that I will use that money to buy a coffee and sit somewhere nice and work on a blog post. Any more than $10.00 and I will use it to support this site and my walks. Look for a holiday pilgrim/walker gift guide coming soon! And then I’ll probably forget that I ever signed up for this affiliate thing.

Thanks for staying with me and continuing to read, and if you have a minute, leave a comment and let me know what you’ve been up to in the past few months. Happy holidays, happy winter, and all my best. I’ll be back soon.

I haven’t been writing. Not really, nothing that feels very concrete or hefty. Some words here and there, and I have ideas swirling around, but I’m just not putting words down onto the page.

What I have been doing, on the other hand, is tinkering with this blog. Can we even call it ‘tinkering’? It feels more substantial than that, but to say this is an ‘overhaul’ feels too dramatic and grand. I think it’s something in-between; a change, a shift, a renewed focus.

the first- and so far only- snow of the winter

If you receive notifications of my posts through email then I don’t know if anything will look very different. Come to think of it, if you find my posts in your wordpress reader, those may not look different, either. Would any of my followers actually notice anything different if I’d decided not to write this post?

But things are a bit different, and for what amounts to something between tinkering and an overhaul, there sure was a lot of work involved. I decided to upgrade my blog; for any of you who know anything about it, that meant migrating over to a self-hosted site and buying a domain and a design and hoping that I could transfer all of my content from the old site to the new one.

Confused yet? The details don’t really matter. I think what matters is that I’m trying something new with this, just to see what it might be like to invest just a bit more into my blog, and this blogging practice.

So to begin with, I changed the name of the site, and I’m now calling it ‘Nadine Walks’. To slap my name up on the top of this thing feels… showy and like I can’t really hide behind anything. A little scary. ‘Begin With a Single Step’ felt right for the start of all of this, it felt right for my first Camino, for the first months when I was attempting to write a book. But I feel like I’m past the beginning of things, and besides, ‘begin with a single step’ now feels a little vague.

Nadine Walks, now that pretty much tells you what you’re getting. You guys can hit me with your feedback on this name, but at this point there’s no going back. I’ll blog about some other things, but what remains at the heart of this space are the stories of my walks. And I hope to have many, many more years of walking adventures.

This isn’t a Camino blog, exactly, but one thing I’ve grown to love in these last few years has been the chance to help out others who are starting their own Camino’s. People have slowly but surely found my blog and picked up advice and information after sorting through the contents. At first I only wanted to write about my experiences but now there is part of me that- very much- wants to write about what I’ve learned. And then I want to share that information with others.

My vision is to create some pages on this blog that can direct people to this information in a clear and easy way, but there’s a lot of work left to do in that area. An even bigger vision is to write an e-book, some sort of Camino guide. This idea has been tumbling around for a year, and might tumble around a little longer until I can decide what, exactly, I want to do.

There’s a lot I want to do. I also want to keep writing my book, but why does it feel so difficult? I was on fire last winter- writing and writing and writing. I set a goal for myself and then I sat down in my chair every evening and I wrote. But now I’m finding it so difficult to get back to this book. I wonder what the point is, if I will ever want anyone to read it, if it will ever be ‘good enough’ (whatever that means).

There was too much existential-writing-crisis going on over here, so I decided to set the book-writing pressure to the side and work on this blog, instead. It’s been confusing and frustrating and hours can go by without much progress. But I’m building something new, and there’s something gratifying about that.

Now, there are a few details that I’m worried about. A couple things haven’t migrated well to this new site- a few images lost, some formatting issues. But the most worrisome is that I’m not convinced that I managed to shift all of my subscribers and followers over to the new site. So this post is something of a test. Are you reading this? Is this thing on? Do things look okay, are you able to access the new website? I suppose silence will mean that I’ve lost all of you- so if you can, please comment to let me know that you are still here. Is anything not working? Is something terribly wrong? Your feedback on this will be immeasurably helpful.

In the meantime, now that this new blog change is mostly set-up, I can get back to some of the things I’ve been avoiding (like: writing my book). And because we’re in the middle of February, it also means that soon I can start ramping up my walks and hikes. Aside from a short burst of snow earlier this week, the winter has not been a hard one. Nevertheless, I’ve mostly only been doing fast walks through my neighborhood, and I’m itching to buy a new pair of shoes and to start really breaking them in. Soon. Soon.

The title of this post is a little deceiving, I thought I should say that upfront. I am going to write about a long walk I took last weekend. And it was the end of February, which still sits squarely in the winter season here in the northeastern US. But it was also a 64 degree day with strong, uninterrupted sunshine. For all intents and purposes, I felt like I had stepped straight into spring, and I loved it.

I never really stopped walking this winter, though the nature of my walks changed. I still try to get out to my local park but instead of hiking the soggy, snow-covered trails, I stick to the paved path. And I spend more time in my own neighborhood, racing to beat the setting sun as I loop through the streets. I bundle up in my long underwear and fleece headband and I rush through the hour-long walk and then hurry back inside to where it is warm.

But I’ve lucked out with a relatively mild winter, and last Sunday we were hit with that 60-degree day. I was just getting over a long and lingering cold and had been shut up inside for much of the past week, so my feet were itching to move, and I was craving fresh air and the outdoors and, more than anything, a bit of warm sunlight.

I headed to the Delaware & Raritan Canal Towpath, a place I discovered last year on one of my first outings with the Philadelphia Camino group. It is a 77-mile trail in New Jersey that runs mostly along- you guessed it- the Delaware & Raritan Canal, and passes through New Brunswick, Trenton (my place of birth!!), Lambertville and Frenchtown. There’s so much history along the trail; in the 19th century, the main section of the canal was used to transport goods to New York City, and other industrial cities. There are old mills and lockkeeper houses, as well as Washington’s Crossing (the place where George Washington crossed the Delaware River during the American Revolution… I just read that this marked a turning point in the war, so maybe this is a spot on the trail that I’ll have to walk to next).

There are also 5 bridges at various points along the trail that cross the Delaware and connect you to a somewhat parallel trail in Pennsylvania- the Delaware Canal Towpath (which is 60 miles in length). Basically, this means that there are lots of possibilities for good walking and good scenery and, if you plan it right, good coffee as well.

One thing that I really miss about my walks and hikes here in the US is the lack of villages and towns that conveniently provide coffee breaks. Multiple café con leche stops on the Camino were one of my very favorite things, and it was rare that I had a day of walking on the Camino that didn’t pass by at least one open bar.

So one of the greatest perks of walking along the D&R Canal Towpath is the chance to pass through quaint villages with their restaurants and markets and coffee shops. It’s perfect, actually: you walk along a sometimes paved, sometimes hard-packed dirt trail for a mile or two, surrounded by nothing but nature: gurgling water, tall trees, grassy fields. Then, all at once, you pass through a little town that is filled with Victorian houses and galleries and shops. This might not happen for the entire length of the trail, but it did for the section that I decided to walk on Sunday, a 12 mile out-and-back stretch from Lambertville to (nearly) Bull’s Island.

The path is totally flat, so this was an ideal late-winter hike for me. For the last few months my walks have been short, and they haven’t included many hills. So I need to ease back into my Camino-training (is there a Camino #3 in my future?? Possibly/probably, though I’m still trying to figure out my summer plans). In any case, a long walk on a flat and mostly smooth path was exactly what I was looking for, and for most of the walk I moved along quickly and easily. I was fueled, of course, by the cappuccino I bought at Stockton Market, an indoor farmer’s market in the village of Stockton, which was about three-miles into my walk. There were stands and tables filled with goods: fresh vegetables, bottles of olive oil, trays of cheese and rounds of bread, but I went straight for the coffee. I carried it with me as I walked, and it all felt kind of luxurious: warm air and bright sunlight, a cup of creamy coffee in my hand as I strolled along the canal.

All signs of luxury left, however, by the last two-miles of the walk. As I plodded along, I did some mental calculations of the last time I had walked more than 7-miles. And as I counted backwards, further and further, I realized it had been sometime in early December, nearly three months earlier. So it was no wonder that after nearly 12-miles, I could feel a small blister developing on the bottom of my right foot, and a slight ache in my left knee. But just as I was feeling rather grumpy and wishing that Lambertville- and my car- would appear quickly, I heard a small commotion off to the side of the trail.

I wandered over and it was a little oasis: three children were set up behind a tiny, make-shift stand. A white plastic table with a brightly colored cloth and a hand-drawn sign, advertising popcorn and lemonade. I could hear a fresh batch popping in the background, along with the clink of ice cubes as a little girl poured a glass for a woman in front of me. I stood in line and smiled at the woman, and we discovered that we both had the same ‘life rule’: if you pass a lemonade stand, you have to stop.

So I finished my long walk with a plastic cup in each of my hands: one filled with icy cold lemonade, the other filled with freshly popped, lightly salted popcorn. My entire body had that tired and satisfied feeling of exertion, and my spirit felt rejuvenated from the sun and the warm air.

It feels like spring is almost here. And it feels like a return to my favorite seasons of life, the ones that include long walks and vigorous hikes, fresh air and adventure and traveling. I can’t wait.

Another photo of the week! This goes back to last Sunday (so… I guess that was the start of my ‘photo of the week’ week? I’m not really sure how I’m measuring these weeks, but I suppose it doesn’t matter too much).

I joined the Philadelphia Chapter of APOC (American Pilgrims on the Camino); I’ll write more about this in a future post, but for now I wanted to share a photo from the hike I joined them on last Sunday. It was the longest day of walking I’ve done since the Camino- 14 miles in about 6 hours, with a few stops and breaks in between. The first few miles were the most difficult, and required us to navigate through snow and over ice; not my ideal walking/hiking conditions…

And, for a bonus photo… the best way I can think of to celebrate St Patrick’s Day (how did you celebrate?):

Something I’ve always loved to do is to use a point in time- New Year’s, my birthday, the beginning of a season- and think back to the previous year and where I was/what I was doing. I’m not alone in this, it’s a natural way to mark our progression (or regression??) through life.

Today is the first day of spring, and I am staring out my kitchen window to at least 5 inches of snow piled on top of the bushes, on the trees, covering the ground. It snowed all day long. Sometimes light flurries, sometimes heavy, large flakes. But once again, everything is white, and still, and quiet.

This landscape is at odds with the season, it’s at odds with how I feel. I want the world to feel bright and alive, not silenced and soft. I want to feel some sunshine on my face and see a scattering of purple wildflowers on my neighbor’s lawn. I want the lengthening days to encourage me to be out and to be doing more; but instead, today, the snow forces me home, and inside.

I feel confident in saying that this is the last snow, for awhile. And spring is here. But it looks a lot different than last year. A year ago, I’d returned from a 5-ish mile hike through my state park and stood in a long line snaking around the block, waiting for a free cup of water ice. I stood in between families and groups of teenagers, I was dressed in hiking pants and an old pair of sneakers. I knew I would be walking the Camino and these were early training days: wearing shoes that gave me blisters and feeling my muscles ache after walking 5 miles through wooded trails. But it was satisfying: a long hike. A free cup of water ice. Spring.

The winter before had been a hard one for me, and it was a victory just to make it to that first day of spring. It was a victory to have decided to walk the Camino, a victory to push myself to go on long hikes after work. That first day of spring felt so full of promise and warmth and light, and I suppose that it was a good indicator of things to come.

This year? Maybe I don’t need the sunshine-y symbolism of the past. This year’s winter went by faster than any winter I can remember; there was cold, ice, snow, rain, and lots of gray… but there was something else. I’m struggling to put my finger on how exactly to describe it, I don’t know if I can. There’s been hope, and promise, and excitement for the future. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I haven’t had days of doubt and frustration. There have been times when I’m a bit down, even a little sad. Confused about how to go out and get the kind of life that I want for myself. But there’s also been this thrill, this… wonder. And it’s sort of underneath everything else, and it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere.

The Camino opened up some things for me. It’s taken me a long time to really feel its influence, but it happened sometime during the winter. I settled into the short, dark days, and let myself think about my life and my future, and then I just started moving. I started writing, but it’s been different than my dozens of other attempts: this time, it feels sort of permanent. I have a different kind of confidence about it, despite the days that I struggle. Because honestly, most days I sit at my computer and I want to bang my head on the table. Sometimes my eyes fill with tears of frustration because the things I am writing are just so, so bad. Some days I don’t write at all, and just watch Netflix. In the past though, these frustrations would have made me stop, they would have made me think that the elements of my life weren’t just right, that I needed to do x, y and z before I could actually start to write.

Now, I just recognize that this is part of the process. This is what it takes to write. I’ve said this before: it’s a lesson I learned on the Camino. It was the Camino: needing to start slowly, start with a single step, in order to get to the end of something very monumental. What I didn’t realize 6 months ago, however, was that the Camino gave me confidence: confidence that I can undertake something very big and scary, confidence that I can find my way through it.

I still have a million questions about my life and my direction. Will I be able to write a book? Will I be able to spend at least a year or two supporting myself from my writing? Will I be able to travel in the ways that I want to: back to Europe but also to Africa, to Turkey, to China and across the US? When will I focus on dating and trying to meet someone? Will I have a family? How can I set up my life so that I can have all of these things? Is it possible?

These are big questions, questions that I know can’t be answered all at once. So instead, I focus on today: Today, everything is great. I spent my work day talking and laughing with teenagers. I went to IKEA and had a $1.00 frozen yogurt. The snow is slowly falling outside my window. I have several writing projects on the desktop of my computer. I have a list of Spanish phrases to practice before I go to bed. Yesterday I walked through a park. Tomorrow I will drive to DC to spend the weekend with a friend.

Spring is here and I’m excited for the next three months. I don’t know if this season will answer any of the larger questions of my life, but I don’t think it needs to, not yet. Because what I’m doing is laying the groundwork for my future: the writing and the walking and spending time with people who make me happy. And for now, that’s all that I need to be doing.

Because in three months, my life will look a little different (in three months, I’ll be on a Camino!), and three months after that, maybe my life will look even more different. And on, and on, until each small step adds up to something monumental. Until they add up to the answer to all of the big questions of my life.

“The impossible remains to be done.” I saw this sign within the first few minutes of walking out of St Jean Pied de Port on the Camino.

My week started with blue sky and ended with blue sky, but everything in between was gray and ice and rain and snow and cold. Sunshine makes all the difference, however, and I savored my time outside this week.

Once again, I have two photos to share: the first is from a Chinese New Year’s parade through the streets of my town, and the second is from a walk around my neighborhood. One photo is all about color and movement and noise; the other is stark contrast and stillness and quiet.

A note about the second photo: I’m amazed that this was taken with my iPhone, with no enhancements, no filters, no editing. I looked up at the trees and the sky and held my phone out and snapped a photo and this is what you get. Sometimes, the world is indescribably majestic.

I didn’t take many photos this week, and this is typical for me in the winter. My days are largely spent indoors at work, and then indoors in my apartment. But I did get to break away for a few days to attend a conference in the middle of the state, and I was so happy on the drive there. It felt so good to be moving again, even if I wasn’t going very far. I drove through a hilly area and I started to get excited about the summer and about my plans to walk another Camino (still not definite, but very likely). I even saw a bald eagle, which I considered very good luck. Sometimes all it takes is to be in a new area and see a different view, to be reminded of all there is out there. I’m hoping to see lots of new views this summer.

So there are two photos for the week- one that I snapped during my drive to the conference, and one at the conference itself. The second one is just for fun: it was taken at the “ice cream social”, a night designed to allow conference participants let their hair down and relax. Mostly, it reminded me of a school dance: people lined up around the perimeter of the room, sticking close to their ‘friend groups’, not mingling, not dancing. After awhile, people started moving out to the dance floor when the DJ tossed out glow sticks, but overall it was a slightly bizarre experience. (The ice cream, on the other hand, was delicious).

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a ‘Photo of the Week’ on this blog, and today I’m giving it a whirl. I’ve always been interested in 365 projects: doing something every single day for a year. There was an ill-fated attempt at my own 365 photo project, and I think I only lasted three days. A photo a week might be more my speed, and will encourage me to remember to pick up my camera (or, as is increasingly the case, my iPhone) and snap a few pictures.

This week’s photo comes from one of the trails that runs through the woods behind my apartment. We finally got a little snow this week, and despite the temperatures being below freezing, I bundled up and went out for a walk. Tramping through the snow I passed kids with sleds, and an elderly neighbor on his cross-country skis. The air was brisk, the sky was a robin’s egg blue, and it felt good to move my legs after days of being cooped up inside.

A few weeks ago I found a blog called A Winter Camino and saw some incredible photos of the Camino Francés covered in snow. You won’t be finding me doing a winter Camino any time soon (or, ever), but there is so much beauty in walking through freshly fallen snow.

So here’s my favorite photo from my winter-y walk. Has anyone else ever tried a photo project? Or done something every single day for a year? Anyone else out walking in the snow these days?

Three sounds are competing for my attention in my kitchen right now: the hiss of boiling water from the red teapot on the stove top, the steady drip of my kitchen faucet to assure that the pipe doesn’t burst, and the faint buzzing of the heater at my side- I’m sitting so close that I’m almost on top of it. This seat- and the bathroom- are the warmest spots in my apartment. And while I’ve considered taking my computer into the bathroom with me, I’ve decided to set up camp at my kitchen table instead.

It is winter, and it is cold. Really cold. With another Camino on my mind I’m itching to get outside and walk, and on most winter days I’ll bundle up and walk for at least 30-minutes around my neighborhood. But today? Not a chance.

So on these days, and on so many of the cold, short days of winter, I find I have lots of extra time on my hands. There’s a little bit of restlessness on these days, but mostly I’m content to stay in. Because it gives me time to do what I’ve been wanting to do for years: write a book.

Now, I haven’t actually started writing a book yet, except for maybe a few pages of rusty words cobbled together that don’t really have a direction yet. It’s more like I’m setting the groundwork for writing a book, something that I thought wouldn’t be that exciting until I actually started doing it. And I have to say: this is exciting.

Writing a book is something I think I always sort of knew that I would do, even when I was very young. Writing (and reading!) were interesting to me, and fun. Writing has been this thought in the back of my head that I’d sometimes pull out and make a few half-hearted attempts to do something about, but I always failed to be consistent. As anyone who’s ever tried to write knows: it’s so much more fun to imagine being a writer than it is to actually write.

Except now, I’m finding it kind of fun. I’ve decided that I want to stop worrying about all the ‘what-if’s’ of trying to write a book, stop worrying about all the other ‘stuff’ that maybe I should do first, stop worrying about whether I’m actually someone who should be writing a book, someone who could be writing a book… and I’m just going to write a book. It’s the most obvious thing in the world and yet it took me years to get here.

I came back from the Camino knowing that I wanted to write about this experience, knowing that I wanted to turn the story into a book, but I thought about doing everything else first. Building up this blog. Writing essays. Writing an e-book. Finding freelancing work. Researching agents.

I didn’t really realize it at the time, but it was all just a way of stalling. I mean, doing all of these things is and can be very important; I knew I didn’t want to stop blogging, and I’ve written a few essays, and will continue to. But mostly I was putting off the thing that I really wanted to do, thinking that I needed much more preparation than what I had until I could actually start.

It reminds me of the Camino, actually. I think about all of those months of preparation: researching the gear and testing out my pack and my shoes, going on as many training hikes as I could, trying to read up on albergues and towns, thinking I could learn Spanish. I wanted to do it all before I left, because what I was about to take on was really big, and really scary. It was intimidating, and all along I kept thinking, “Who am I to be doing this? Who am I to think that I can do this?”

But on the Camino, it turns out that all you need to do is show up and walk. You need a way to get to whatever town you’re going to start in, and you need a pack to hold your things and you need some decent shoes to walk in, but really, you don’t need much else. You just figure it out as you go, and there is nothing like the actual experience to understand what the journey is going to be like for you.

So did I need to do all the preparation that I did? The training walks helped me out so much, but honestly? I arrived in Santiago at the same time as so many of the people who’d started with me in St Jean. And we were all fit and happy and smiling at the end. I was more fit in the beginning than most, and better adapted to the walking, but other than save me some pain, the destination was the same for all of us. In the end, we all got there.

And when it comes to writing a book, it dawns on me that it is just like beginning a Camino: you need to have a very general idea of what you’re getting yourself into, you need a few of the specifics nailed down, and then you just need to begin. And the beginning might not be pretty… I might have the writing equivalent of blisters or bed bugs, of fatigue and a too heavy pack, of sleepless nights because of incessant snoring… but in the end, none of these things needs to prevent me from writing the book. Because it can get done as long as I begin, and as long as I can do a little bit every day.

I’m taking a writing class, though it doesn’t involve much actual writing of the book and instead has me starting more at the end, rather than the beginning (I’m learning all about how to eventually get someone interested in the thing that I’m going to write). But in a rather twisted way, I’m wondering if this wasn’t the best possible way I could have started. It’s forced me to think very specifically about the kind of book I want to write and the things that I want to say. Mapping out an annotated table of contents when I hadn’t given much thought to a structure or narrative arc was tough, but it made me see what my book could look like. It gave me a beginning.

This has been a quiet winter for me, but there has also been a lot of joy. I sit myself down at roughly the same time every evening, put on my writing playlist, and begin to chip away. This task feels more daunting to me than walking 500-miles did; this feels like I have thousands and thousands of miles to go before I get anywhere.

There are so many pieces of this Camino journey that I need to consider. I have a lot of time- 5 months- to prepare, and I know that this time is going to both crawl and fly. Money, travel logistics, buying equipment (I won’t need much, but, having never backpacked or “formally” hiked before, the ONLY item I already own is a Spork), learning some basic Spanish, training… the list goes on and on.

I’ve done a bit of reading on how much physical preparation is required to walk 500 miles on the Camino, and it appears that this is a walk that nearly anyone can do. Practice and training won’t hurt- and by all means, it will probably help- but many say that the first week of the Camino will be an adjustment, no matter how prepared you are. And that after a week or so, most people find their ‘Camino legs’.

That being said, the advice is to get in some good, long training hikes, ideally wearing both the shoes and pack you’ll be bringing on the Camino. For pilgrims walking the French route and starting in St Jean Pied-de-Port (the common starting point), the first day is widely considered the most challenging of the entire route. Pilgrims leave the village and almost immediately begin a steep ascent into the Pyrenees. From what I’ve read, it is a long, tough day.

I’m relatively fit, and already a regular walker. The winter months slow me down and I don’t get outside nearly as often as I do in other seasons. But as soon as the weather warms, I know that I’ll be hitting some trails and will work up to some long hikes. In the next few months, I’ll find good shoes and a good pack and will attempt to put it all together.

But my legs are getting itchy. I’m reading account after account of pilgrims on the Camino, about the long days of walking, about the sore muscles and blistered feet. I’m anxious to get outside and to get walking. So today, I did. Despite the freezing temperatures and the falling snow, I took a walk. I bundled up and put on some boots and walked through my neighborhood. And despite the raw wind on my face and my numbed fingers, the walk was beautiful.

So this is my training, for now. Short, winter walks in the cold. I’m also thinking about joining the Y so that I can stay a bit more active in these next few months: go to some yoga classes and walk/run around a track, maybe even spend some time on an elliptical. It probably sounds silly but this is big for me: I’ve never joined a gym before. In the past few years I’ve gone to some zumba and yoga classes, but I’ve always hesitated to join a gym. Maybe I still feel out of place: a non-athlete surrounded by people who know what they are doing.

I think I’m finally beginning to let go of this: the idea that I don’t actually belong in certain places or doing certain things. I belong anywhere I want to belong. I have a feeling that the experience of walking the Camino is going to stretch this idea even more, that it will challenge the ways I’ve always seen myself, and that it will challenge the limitations I put on myself. In fact, it’s already started to.